Column: NFL needs to learn to play by the rules

The judge used football lingo, maybe so she could get the NFL finally to understand it has to play by the rules, too.

If so, it didn't work.

The league that only a few days ago brought fans one great Super Bowl and one of Janet Jackson's breasts doesn't much like taking advice from anyone, even a federal judge.

In fact, the ink had barely dried on U.S. District Judge Shira A. Scheindlin's decision Thursday, clearing the way for Maurice Clarett to enter April's draft, when the NFL dismissed it as poor legal reasoning and vowed to appeal.

Judging from the lopsided win Scheindlin gave Clarett, the league might get rid of some of its high-priced attorneys and save the money for Clarett's signing bonus instead.

In 70 pages of commingled legalese and football slang, she trashed the NFL's contention that it should be able to tell young players when they're old enough to be paid to put on the pads.

Not so, she said. The rule violates antitrust law and "should be sacked."

The judge couldn't have made it any clearer.

Perhaps it's time for the NFL to start listening.

Yes, it's probably true that most players aren't physically and mentally ready to play in the NFL without at least three years of college. It's a brutal, demanding league for anyone, and for a 20-year-old who just came into some money, it figures to be tougher still.

Clarett will probably find that out himself, assuming some NFL team takes a chance on the talented but untested running back who played only one year at Ohio State. The ranks of failed NFL running backs are littered with athletes just as gifted who played all four years of college and still couldn't make it in the pros.

Judging from the people Clarett associated with in college and some of the things he did, it's easy to say he is not emotionally ready for the NFL, either. But that could be said for much of the NFL, which has its share of wife beaters and drug users who got through college but aren't emotionally at the top of their games.

Just because Clarett doesn't like to go to class, lied about some stereo equipment being stolen, and hangs around with a guy who has been known to make a bet or two doesn't necessarily make him public enemy No. 1.

Still, he'll be a marked man, resented by players who did their time and who are more than eager to show the kid he doesn't belong.

"Because of the way he's done all these things, some people here see it as disrespectful," Washington Redskins linebacker LaVar Arrington said. "I'm sure guys are going to break his tail, try to break him in. That's the way it's going to be for him. Either he'll succeed, or he'll be a total bust. If he can make it that rookie year without being assassinated, I think he'll be all right."

The bottom line, though, is that Clarett deserves the chance to succeed or fail on his own terms. That's always been the American way and shouldn't be opposed by a league that usually wastes no opportunity to wrap itself in the red, white and blue.

Spencer Haywood has been there. His 1970 case opened the door to undergraduates in the NBA under the league's "hardship" rule.

"I was in Iraq this summer for eight days with some retired NBA players and the USO, and I saw 18-year-olds fighting for our country," Haywood said. "I'd love somebody to explain to me how we can send an 18-year-old to war, but we can't to the NFL."

Clarett's biggest risk is that he ends up being the Curt Flood of football, unloved by most, hated by some and never able to play his way past the stigma that comes with helping change the way sports does business.

Indeed, wide receiver Larry Fitzgerald may well be taken a lot higher in the same draft as Clarett and have a much better career should he decide to forgo his last two years at Pittsburgh.

The NFL has the luxury of using college football as a free minor league system, and it's hard to argue that the current system hasn't been good to both sides. The NFL gets seasoned players, and the athletes get an education.

But telling the best players how long they have to wait to play for pay -- and picking three years out of the air as some sort of magic number -- is an infringement on their right to earn a living.

"Times have changed. There's just so much money now," said UNLV football coach John Robinson, who was once an NFL head coach. "If you're a young guy and someone says here's $5 million, well, there shouldn't be too many rules that prevent that."

As of Thursday, there's one less rule preventing it. A federal judge made sure of that, then offered some advice of her own.

If the NFL is so worried about maturity, she said, why not test every player's maturity level?

"In such a scenario, no player would be automatically excluded from the market and each team could decide what level of risk it is willing to tolerate," Scheindlin wrote.